New Banning Coach Dominguez a Ferragamo Disciple

Believe this: A few weeks ago, Banning High School football players asked first-year Coach Joe Dominguez if they could do up-downs, a conditioning exercise in which they run in place, hit the dirt and bounce back up at least 100 times.

Dominguez, not really a fan of the drill, reluctantly agreed.

How could he say no?

The time-honored drill was vintage Chris Ferragamo, and Dominguez--a disciple of the former Banning coach who collected eight L.A. City Section championships in his 18-year reign--had to defer to Ferragamo’s style if he was going to persuade his players that the Banning glory years would return in 1988.

“The kids were asking for the drill, they wanted to do it, so we did it,” said Dominguez, who called plays for Ferragamo during the championship years. “If the kids believe in it, we’re gonna do it. That’s the way it is around here.”

Here , literally, is the corner of Avalon Boulevard and Pacific Coast Highway in Wilmington. Here is where winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing. Here is the new (or, if you will, the return to the old) Banning football program.

It’s not what you saw last year. It’s what you expected to see--a bevy of big, fleet, punishing athletes contending for yet another City Section title.

Last year, however, Dominguez had not yet arrived. He had gone to Harbor College as an assistant to Ferragamo, whose place at Banning was filled by an outsider, John Hazelton.

Hazelton’s Pilots lost a first-round playoff game to Cleveland and finished 6-4. Not an embarrassing record for a first-year coach, but not up to snuff at Banning.

At Banning, Hazelton was looked upon as the man responsible for drastically altering Ferragamo’s option offense--an offense that had carried Banning to the City Section championship game in 1986. For several weeks that year, Banning was ranked No. 1 in the country by USA Today. Since the team seemed to stall a year later, naturally Hazelton was blamed.

When Hazelton was fired in late January, Principal Augustine Herrera said it was because Hazelton lacked a teaching credential, which he now has.

Hazelton, who had expected to coach at Banning for many years, said recently that he was “devastated emotionally for a few months” after being released.

Dominguez and Ferragamo agree that Hazelton was a capable coach. But what matters most to Dominguez and the community is not whether Hazelton should have been hired but the effect his system had on the fortunes of a long-successful program.

Said Ed Barreras, the Pilots’ new defensive coordinator: “It would have taken Banning another 10 years with Hazelton to get it where it used to be.”

In other words, Hazelton’s tackle-to-tackle running game will give way this year to Ferragamo’s old system: the veer option, with a few new wrinkles.

“If last year’s staff was guilty of anything, it was guilty of trying to change too much too soon,” explained Dominguez, 36, a 1970 Banning graduate. “This school has been here since 1925, and there is a lot of tradition. Around here, in our bad years, we’ve lost three games. Our worst year, we lost three and still won City.

“The players and community will accept change as long as it’s successful, but it wasn’t last year. And if you have a well-tuned engine, why mess with it? This engine here at Banning was fine-tuned. The kids knew the old system worked, and they believed in it, so I think the change had to be done gradually. It had to be an easy transition.”

It wasn’t. Even the uniforms and helmets were changed, further incensing the community. But the Pilots will be wearing the all-black of old against San Fernando High tonight at Harbor College.

“If you were on vacation for a year and you go to see us play tonight, you will not have missed a beat,” Dominguez said, grinning.

The task is simple: Win the City title. Endure a loss to Carson? Sure--as long as Banning wins the championship. “To go 11-1 or whatever and not win the City is not a successful year. I believe that,” Dominguez said.

Dominguez coordinated Ferragamo’s offense through six consecutive championships from 1976 to 1981, and again in ’83 and ’85. To ensure similar results, he has surrounded himself with coaches who were a part of or played during the championship years, including two of Ferragamo’s former assistants, Rocky Garibay and Barreras.

Garibay joined Dominguez and Ferragamo in 1975, followed them to Harbor last year and teamed with Dominguez again this year. Barreras coached with all three from 1976 through ’81 and returned as defensive coordinator this year at the request of Dominguez.

“I brought back the same defense we used to have,” Barreras said, “and we are really trying to put last year behind us, just want to throw it right out the window.”

Barreras, who graduated from Banning, has known Dominguez since they attended elementary school together in Wilmington. They graduated together from Cal State Dominguez Hills and coached Banning’s B team from 1972 to ’74.

The following year, Dominguez’s first with the varsity, Banning lost the City championship game to a Charles White-powered San Fernando team. The glory years began a year later when Barreras joined the varsity as backfield coach.

People like Garibay and Barreras will probably make Dominguez’ job easier, as will the 5-month-old Red and Black Alumni Club. A similar support group failed to get off the ground a few years ago, but President Jim Gasso said the new group has 80 members, all former players, whose efforts to raise money, arrange a scholarship fund and socialize are succeeding.

Gasso, a former free safety at Santa Monica College and Cal State Long Beach who graduated from Banning in 1976, started the club after asking Dominguez what could be done to bolster the program. Soon former Pilots from the 1930s and ‘40s joined. Now “we have a community of ex-players, and it’s going really well,” he said.

And Gasso said the club will flower even more when--not if--Dominguez succeeds at Banning.

“A lot of people don’t realize Joe was the backbone of Chris Ferragamo’s system,” Gasso said. “If Joe had not been with Chris, Chris would not have accomplished what he did. The community knows that, and they are comfortable with Joe.”

Ferragamo agrees: “Wilmington likes hometown guys. They like Joe because he is a hometown boy, and I think he’ll go back to being successful. He is really a young genius.”

It is Dominguez’s ability to read defenses and make lightning-quick adjustments, Ferragamo said, that makes his offense successful.

Junior quarterback John Ma’ae, who started all of Banning’s games last year, will have to engineer that offense. He expects to throw the ball about half the time this season after often passing less than 10 times a game in 1987. “Things will be better this year,” Ma’ae said. “Joe makes us work harder. He respects us, and he’s just an interesting guy to be around.”

Offensive lineman Mike Alexander, who graduated in May, felt similarly about Hazelton last season--until, he said, “I lost respect for him because it didn’t seem like he was behind me and other players.”

Hazelton noted that seniors like Alexander probably had trouble accepting his system, whereas younger players like Ma’ae were more supportive.

These days, Hazelton is defensive coordinator at L.A. Valley College. He and Ma’ae still talk, but Ma’ae said he’s glad he doesn’t have to practice the same off-tackle running plays 50 times in a row, as he did last year.

Hazelton’s system opened holes to run through, Alexander said, but the holes eventually closed because beating good teams such as Carson and Gardena required deception as well as the blocking power supplied by the likes of 6-foot-7, 275-pound All-City tackle Bob Whitfield.

Dominguez hopes that when his system finishes the football season’s exam before the community’s discerning eye, the grades will be better.

And the coach, whose off-season passion is running, hopes to enjoy his reviews as he logs 60 miles a week in sneakers.

Last year, Dominguez ran the Boston Marathon in 3 hours, 8 minutes, his best time yet. He had braved the 26.2-mile distance four previous times in other locations, including Long Beach and San Francisco.

Joe Montijo, quarterback of Banning’s 1976 championship team, ran with Dominguez in Boston and said running gives Dominguez a chance to get away from football. “It’s one way for us to get involved in something competitive by ourselves,” Montijo said.

Marathons on foot, however, will have to wait for the completion of Dominguez’s first season as head coach at Banning, a four-month race pressured by monumental expectations.

Gasso, who said Dominguez could run for mayor of Wilmington, put it best: “The expectation is that Banning should go the City finals, and tradition dictates that Joe is the perfect guy to take care of that.”